Upgrade G Drive Q?

[Kahalu'u Bob]

I have a 250 GB G Drive Q external hard drive. I like the enclosure very much, but 250 GB is a little small.

Does anyone know if I can upgrade and put a 1 TB hard drive in the enclosure?

Thanks for any advice you may have.

 

[199708]

You should be able to.
Before you order, check to see if the current drive is an IDE or SATA drive, as they have different connectors.

 

[Kahalu'u Bob]

Good advice. I'll pull it apart before I order anything. I just hoped someone else had already tried that!

Thanks.

 

[rgarjr]

On the IDE or PATA drives its hard to find anything big anymore, they dont make those types bigger as the SATA ones.

 

[NATO]

I'd love to hear how you get on, I've just ordered a G-Tech Q drive with the intention of eventually swapping out the supplied drive for a larger capacity one of my own, I haven't been able to get any information about how easy these drives are to disassemble.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I'd love to hear how you get on, I've just ordered a G-Tech Q drive with the intention of eventually swapping out the supplied drive for a larger capacity one of my own, I haven't been able to get any information about how easy these drives are to disassemble.

Try way too easy. I had the drive for two hours before i cracked it open. You have to remove the security sticker to get access to one of the screws, but after you take those off, the cover slides off, exposing the innards.

 

[NATO]

Try way too easy. I had the drive for two hours before i cracked it open. You have to remove the security sticker to get access to one of the screws, but after you take those off, the cover slides off, exposing the innards.

Wow, you're not kidding... mine arrived this afternoon so I powered it up to make sure it worked, then cracked it open. So, so easy. It's just an aluminium tray with a PCB on one side, an HDD on the other and two cables joining the two. Simple!

 

[iMac Kevin]

Yes you can upgrade G-Drive Q

I know this is an old post from 2009, but I just took my 250GB G-Drive Q that I purchased in 2007, and successfully swapped out the original Hitachi Deskstar 250GB HD with a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 drive. I connected my iMac using firewire 800, formatted it to Mac OS, and it's running perfectly... actually quieter and smoother than before, and feels cooler to the touch.

Note that G-Tech support says that you can upgrade the G-Drive Q up to 1TB. See copy/paste from an email G-Tech support sent me:

Dear Kevin,
Thank you for contacting the Hitachi GST Technical Support Center.
The Q line of drives should support up to 1TB drives. That was the highest we went before moving onto our Gen 4 units.
You shouldn't have any problems upgrading as long as the interface inside is a SATA drive.
Regards,

Hitachi GST Technical Support Center

 

[Dubhead]

Insert larger than 1TB? Anyone tried?

I am glad to see someone else has done this. I have a few of these older 250GB G-Drives hanging around our studio and I am hoping to squeeze a bit more life out of them. I assume from the G-Tech response that these might be Gen 3 enclosures (using the older power supply with 5 pins. I do wonder if the chipset can support the larger 2TB or even 3TB drives as that would be super awesome for our needs if that was the case. Has anyone tried this at all. I actually have a few 2TB drives sitting around for replacements should a slice from our Drobo kick the bucket so I may try this sometime soon and see what happens. I would like to hear feedback though if anyone knows definitively what the chipset on the controller board can muster.

Cheers,
~Dubhead

I know this is an old post from 2009, but I just took my 250GB G-Drive Q that I purchased in 2007, and successfully swapped out the original Hitachi Deskstar 250GB HD with a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 drive. I connected my iMac using firewire 800, formatted it to Mac OS, and it's running perfectly... actually quieter and smoother than before, and feels cooler to the touch.

Note that G-Tech support says that you can upgrade the G-Drive Q up to 1TB. See copy/paste from an email G-Tech support sent me:

Dear Kevin,
Thank you for contacting the Hitachi GST Technical Support Center.
The Q line of drives should support up to 1TB drives. That was the highest we went before moving onto our Gen 4 units.
You shouldn't have any problems upgrading as long as the interface inside is a SATA drive.
Regards,

Hitachi GST Technical Support Center

 

[Dubhead]

2TB Western Digital drive works! Now what about a 3TB?

Folks,
Following my previous post, I couldn't help myself and went ahead and installed a WD20EARS 2TB SATA drive in my old G-Tech G-Drive enclosure (turns out this one was made in 2006!) and it works great! Not sure if there are any additional limitations here (like very large file transfer but I have moved 200GB back and forth to this drive via the eSata connection without issue. Beautiful....anyone want to try with a 3TB drive or will it definitely be incompatible?

~Dubhead~